Hi:

I have to say I m very disappointed with the performance of Borland for the past few years.

No one needs a Delphi dev now, no matter how many years of experience you have, and its all Borland's fault, now I m a .net developer, the jump wasn't too hard because I ve been using the horrible VB for a very long time(this is my personal opinion you could disagree), but it's not a language that I m as comfortable in as I was with Delphi, The components are SO badly designed; for example the datagrid in .Net; who came up with that? its exactly the opposite of simple, straightforward design, you need to change the font of your header? though luck, and if you have to use the CF you actually can't change the font of the header at all.

How could Borland have a fantastic IDE, a very well designed set of components, etc with a lot of potential and developers working within that IDE and let it all go ??? I don't know what s in their minds, but I do know that Delphi is Dead, Delphi RIP

The best release of Delphi was version 7, tried to turn in MS Visual Studio from version 8, hated it after that. Delphi was different now it's a poor man's VS clone.

>>> “Our company had its head in the sands about open source, just hoping it was a fad and would go away,” <<<

Very true, but doesn't really address the question: how *DOES* one compete when so many other (arguably better?) tools such as VS.NET Express are completely free?

>>> Might that mean a Delphi plug-in for Visual Studio? “That’s one of many approaches. I’m not going to comment specifically, but thematically you are in the right direction,” says Douglas. <<<

I've been arguing for a Delphi add-in for VS for at least the last three years. I'm sure the penny will drop eventually.... but don't hold your breath... ;-)

Dave

Hi

I have to say we like Delphi: we have been using it as our main development tool for over 12 years. In many ways Delphi code can be written like English sentences, and it is possible to devise the code so that it is normalised, that is, as well as the data in the databases.

From our point of view the problems arose once Borland had ignored the open source aspect and then over-complicated the approach by attempting to satisfy a wider range of platforms, especially .NET. As it happens, we provide our customers with customised database systems which have never seemed to need for .NET.

In effect we are market led, and find that Delphi coupled with the SQL databases and their respective tools gives us the flexibility, accuracy and speed that we have not been able to find elsewhere - and believe me, we spent a lot of time evaluating all the possibilities.

I think, along with many others, we are simply waiting to see which way Borland (CodeGear!) jumps... but at the end of the day it would be a crime to waste such a good IDE.